November 6, 2016

Place To Write

Place to Write is Immersive and Useful

Product (macOS): Place To Write
Price: $5.99

Product (iOS iPad): Place To Write
Price: $0.99 (with in-app purchases for themes ($3.99) and Creative Tools ($2.99))

People who write have different needs when it comes to their tools. George R. R. Martin of "A Game of Thrones" fame writes in Wordstar. Some others prefer Scrivener. There are writers who are happy in Microsoft Word. A new crop of writers have adopted Ulysses as their weapon of choice in the business of cleaving words together.

I write in Sublime Text 3. It is a text editor, designed and used primarily for writing code, but it is what I am comfortable in and through the use of some plugins and snippets have turned into my ideal markdown based writing environment. Sometimes I find myself writing in Ulysses, I love its minimalistic aesthetic. I also use iA Writer in my work. iA Writer helps me in the editing phase.

Writing is hard.

I will rephrase that. Some writing is laughably easy. I write a diary everyday. The only audience for the diary is myself. It is easy to write. There is no associated tension. I talk to myself, free of the need to manage impressions, it flows and it is easy to write.

Writing for the blog is harder. I try to inform, educate, and sometimes entertain my audience. I strive to be clear, concise, engaging and informative. Does not come easily to me. My default state is "grumpy."

Periodically, I write fiction. That, I find is even harder. I keep working at it. Hoping that it will improve over time. But any help I can get in that process is welcome.

"…Place To Write is a tool that helps all kinds of amateur and professional writers to get inspired and focused on their writing, stimulating their creativity and creating a peaceful mind-set, while offering bullet-proof creative writing aids."

This is a tough set of tasks Place To Write has set out to achieve. It has a slew of features designed to achieve its goals. I will break them into what I conceptualize as Executional elements and Process elements. Executional elements are those features involved with the actual task of writing. Process elements are those features which are designed to aid the process of writing or stimulate the thinking behind the writing.

Executional Elements

Themes

Themes

Place To Write is built around themes. They are different from the usual themes which ship with a text editor. A good word to describe the themes in Place To Write might be environments. They are audio-visual environments. For instance, the Jutland theme is characterized by falling snow, and a sound track which simulates winter and a cold dank wind. There are eight such themes, all of which are different, interesting and immersive.

Background Music

Music

To further consolidate the notion of an environment you get to pick your choice of background music to accompany your writing. There are eight of these to choose from. Thankfully the program also comes with a silent option, you can turn off the background music if you find it intrusive.

Fonts and Options

Fonts

The program ships with four fonts: Helvetica Neue, Iowan, Menlo and Courier. You get a choice of writing with markdown or without. There are also the usual spell checking, grammar checking and automatic spell checking options.

Keyboard Sound

Keyboard Sound

Place To Write gives you the option of choosing a keyboard sound or silence. If you have a mechanical keyboard on which you do your writing, the typewriter sounds are a little much, otherwise you might find this useful to give you a sense of rhythm and flow.

Timer

Timer

You can employ a timer to help you in the search for productivity. It is a welcome addition to the tool chest of a writer, and I am happy to see that it is included in the program itself.

Some Other Executional Issues

The application supports markdown but doesn't support keyboard commands to make it easier to write markdown. You have to insert all the code for markdown on your own. I would have preferred keyboard commands to input the usual markdown code for things like bold, italics, headings, and links.

Full screen mode is unusable on an iMac. It might be fine on a laptop but on an iMac the line is across the whole screen and no one can write like that. On the iMac I have to turn off full screen mode and work in a window which definitely lessens the impact of the environment the program is seeking to create. Full screen could be improved by reducing the text entry and display area. Restrict the width to 80 characters or something like that. Might be better to give users a choice.

Process Elements

Place To Write provides help to the creative process. It does that by providing some tools to jog your creative juices. They include:

Character Builder

1. Character Builder: You can create characters based on appearance, occupation and traits.

Plot Generator

2. Plot Generator: Two characters, place, situation and theme are suggested randomly.

Random Words

3. Random Words: This is a creative writing technique where you focus on a random word, concentrate on that word to brainstorm issues.

Myths and Legends

4. Myths and Legends: A story is provided for you to prime your creativity.

Random Inspiration

5. Random Inspiration: You can randomly generate mood, object, and terrain prompts to provide you an environment to work in.

Classical Inspiration

6. Classical Inspiration: This provides a clip from classic literature to provide inspiration.

These little aids which are aimed towards releasing your creative juices are not an area I am familiar with. I haven't seen any other products which provide these. Place To Write is unique to me. How useful these are is a function of your writing process or requirements. I am happy to have these aids at my disposal and they helps nudge my thinking in a more productive/creative direction.

iPad Version

iPad Version of Place To Write

Place To Write has an iPad version and you can sync documents through iCloud. The interface is similar on both platforms and it is helpful to have the ability to take your writing along when you are mobile. The Place To Write iPad version bundles some in-app purchases to make it the complete creative solution.

Conclusion

Place To Write is an interesting product. It provides an immersive writing experience and it is augmented with some creative aids which help you in the process of writing. I like the product and it is a good addition to the creative writing arsenal. I would like the support for markdown to be beefed up. Keyboard commands to aid in the writing of markdown would be most welcome.

I recommend Place To Write heartily for creative writing.

A review copy for both the Mac version and the iPad version was provided to me by the developer for review.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

macOS iOS Writing

November 2, 2016

Draft Control Is a Safety Net for My Writing

Draft Control

Draft Control on the Mac App Store
Price: 39.99

Doesn’t happen often.

You try out an application and it becomes a crucial component in your workflow almost instantly. You wonder how you worked without this tool in your arsenal. Draft Control is one of those.

“Draft Control works alongside your word processor, tracking changes over time. Every change is archived, searchable, and restorable.”

It is simple in its implementation. You assign a document or a folder of documents to Draft Control. It tracks changes to the document/s. You get to see every change and restore every change. That is it.

It supports the following formats:

• Microsoft Word (.docx)
• Pages (.pages)
• LibreOffice, OpenOffice (.odt)
• Scrivener (.scriv)
• Mellel (.mellel)
• Markdown (.md)
• Rich Text (.rtf)
• LaTeX
• All plain text formats (including but not limited to: .txt, .tex, .html, .css, .json, .fountain, etc.)

macOS has a feature called Versions which does something similar. It gives you a look at different iterations of the same document. It is not as useful as Draft Control and not widely supported by applications. Ulysses, Pages, and Mellel supports it. But they are the exceptions. None of the established text editors for instance have adopted this feature from the OS. In my research, the only text editor who supports the OS versions feature is CotEditor. Notably, Scrivener, a tool which is popular among writers, gets support from Draft Control and doesn’t support the macOS feature.

Draft Control supports iCloud and that makes it possible for you to have the same document tracked by two computers. You can work on the same document in two machines and the changes are tracked by Draft Control for both of the computers through iCloud. Draft Control also supports documents hosted through Dropbox, Box or Google Drive.

Draft Control makes it possible for me to work on my document without worrying about losing any of the additions/changes I make to it in the process of writing and editing. It gives me the ability to go back in time and undo edits and additions and revive sections which I rewrote and now think were better in their original form. It is my safety net. I can’t imagine writing without it.

Draft Control has a detailed help page here. I am not going to repeat the information available there. Please read this section to get complete use out of the product. It is a pleasure to use a well documented product.

I recommend Draft Control heartily for anyone who cares about keeping track of changes to their documents.

A review copy was provided by the developer for this review.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie.

writing versions macOS

October 31, 2016

Quick and Easy Search and Replace With TextSweep

TextSweep

TextSweep
Price: $29.99

TextSweep is an application for searching and replacing text in multiple files.

You select a directory, specify the files you need to be modified, specify the terms to search and replace and make the changes. Importantly, it lets you undo the changes if you want.

It is easy to use and fast.

The product is meant for users who are new to text editors. Most text editors have the ability to do this. Sublime Text 3, BBEdit, & TextMate, all perform the search and replace function across multiple files with a lot more control than TextSweep provides. I guess that is the lure of TextSweep. If you knew GREP and the intricacies of a text editor you would not need this program. This is a good solution for newcomers to the category of text editors.

TextSweep is well-designed, it is fast and elegant. It is an easy to use tool and it has the advantage of undoing the changes in case you make a mistake or change your mind.

I recommend the product for newcomers to the task of text editing.

I was provided a license by the developer to review the product.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie.

Text macOS

October 23, 2016

RightFont, the Font Manager Apple Needed to Ship

RightFont Icon

Product: RightFont.
Price: $49.95.

The last time I had a font manager loaded on the Mac was when Bohemian Coding was making Fontcase. Sadly, Bohemian Coding decided to stop development on Fontcase and moved on to Sketch. I have been using Apple's Font Book to manage my fonts. It does the job, but Fontcase was better.

These are the problems with Font Book:

1. Slow.
2. Fonts have to be installed in the Users Font folder.
3. No integration with online services like Google Fonts or Adobe Typekit.
4. No auto-activation in apps like Photoshop or Sketch.
5. Designed for novice users.

If you want to go beyond the basic skills of Font Book, you need to look at RightFont.

RightFont Library

RightFont is a lightweight and fast font manager for the Mac. It is feature rich and efficient at handling large collections of fonts.

One of the big advantages of RightFont is that your fonts can be anywhere and RightFont will manage them for you. You can activate and deactivate fonts anytime you want irrespective of where they are stored.

RightFont Lists

You can sync your fonts across multiple computers via Dropbox or Google Drive. This is useful when you are working at your desktop and have to move the work offsite with your laptop. You don't have to ensure font compatibility between your machines. Syncing through Dropbox or Google Drive gives you instant sync.

RightFont Favorites

RightFont gives you the ability to organize your fonts by creating font lists and marking fonts as favorites. You can customize your own preview content for any font. Lets you see how the font would look displaying the content you are using it for. You can filter your fonts by font classification (sans serif, serif, script, etc.), width or weight.

Right Font Icons

You can use more than 4000 icons directly in your design through RightFont.

In addition, you can automatically sync fonts from Google Fonts / Adobe Typekit collection (via Adobe Creative Cloud client). For those of you into web design or print publishing, this is an essential feature. Another feature which is going to appeal to designers is the automatic activation of fonts for Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator or Sketch documents.

RightFont is the font manager which Apple should have shipped with the OS. You can use it to work with your extensive font collection.

I heartily recommend it.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

Fonts Management macOS

September 12, 2016

Making Drag and Drop Better

Yoink - Simplify drag and drop on your Mac
Price: $6.99

Filepane: File Management / MyMixApps
Price: $4.99 Direct
Price: $6.99 App Store

Aptonic - Dropzone 3
Price: $9.99

Yoink This

Yoink

Yoink is the simplest of the three. It is a virtual shelf where you can hold files and folders you are moving while you go about the task. So, you have a couple of files that you would like to move. You drag them to Yoink. You have another folder you would like to move. You search for that and find it. Now you move this folder to Yoink. You have a destination folder in mind, you locate it in the Finder next. Then you take the files and folder that you have stored in Yoink, and move those to the destination folder in the Finder. That is the basic use case of Yoink.

It is useful. It reliably does what it is supposed to do. But it is not as powerful as the next two utilities I am going to cover.

DropZone 3 to Enhance Productivity

DropZone 3

DropZone is a menu bar app. It provides the same functionality that Yoink does.

DropZone 3 DropBar

There is a DropBar in the app where you can move files and folders. After you are done, you can select the target folder and move the files and folders from the DropBar to the target folder. Unlike Yoink, you can consolidate the files and folders in your DropBar by dragging them into each other. This is the basic functionality of Yoink and DropZone does this well.

DropZone 3 Add to Grid

In addition, you can also drag applications and folders into the Add to Grid section and have them show up in their section.

Dropzone 3 Folders and Apps

This lets you use DropZone as a launcher of your favorite applications, or folders. It also lets you open documents in the applications you have stacked in the Apps/Folders section. Just drag the document to the application icon to launch the app with your document open.

Why is this a big deal?

Finder Open With…

I am working on this article. Taking screen shots and adding stuff to them in Skitch. If I right-click on the screenshot, choose Open With, this is the drop-down menu the Finder gives me. I have to go down this list to choose Skitch, which is the application I am using to annotate the screenshots. That is a large list I have to navigate, much easier to just drag to Skitch in the DropZone menu. Of course, I could have launched Skitch, it would then show up in the Dock and I could drag my screenshots to the Skitch icon in the Dock to edit the screenshots. That is one of the many good things about the macOS, you can do the same task in lots of different ways.

Dropzone 3 Toggle Grid

As an added feature, Dropzone has an user-assignable keyboard command you can use to toggle the grid.

Dropzone 3 Shortcuts

You can just pick up the document in the Finder, press the keyboard command to toggle the grid, and then press the shortcut letter that is assigned to each element in Dropzone. So, in my use case, I pick up the screenshot that I want to annotate, hit the keyboard command to toggle the grid, and then type S to open the screenshot in Skitch.

Dropzone 3 Actions

DropZone also has a section for Actions. You can drag and drop documents to actions in this section and the program performs its magic on it. For instance, one of the standard actions you can get from DropZone's repository of actions is the Install Application action. Take a downloaded disk image file(.dmg), drag it to this action and the action opens up the image file, copies the application over to the Applications folder, ejects the mounted image file, and opens the Application that it just installed. All without you doing anything to it.

For developers, DropZone provides a well-documented API, here.

FilePane: Enhanced File Management

FilePane

In addition to dragging and dropping a document into FilePane, you can get the FilePane drop area by pressing an user selectable keyboard command.

Like DropZone, FilePane does a lot more than Yoink. You can drag a file, folder, text or image to it from any application, and it gives you different options of things you can do to the dragged items.

FilePane Folder Drag

If you drag a folder to the FilePane, the above is the screen you get.

FilePane Image Drag

When you drag an image file to FilePane, you get three additional choices.

FilePane Image Convert

You can convert the image to a different format and control the compression that this step entails.

FilePane Image Resize

You get a basic resize menu when you choose to resize the image. You get more options when you click on the resize/crop icon.

FilePane Image Resize/Crop

FilePane shines at these tasks.

FilePane gives you a well-designed set of choices in its prefence panel.

FilePane Preferences

Choose “Manage destinations.” You get a menu.

FilePane Manage Destinations

You can assign to this menu the folders you regularly use to transfer files to. You don’t have to interact with the Finder much when you are dragging and dropping in FilePane.

Detour Through the Keyboard

If you have followed my writing, you have heard me say, several times, that the way to achieve mastery over your computer is keyboard commands. Why then am I reviewing three drag and drop, mouse/trackpad based utilities? Primarily because it is a journey. You are going to get familiar with your computer and the way it works. You are going to get comfortable with various software and its capabilities and over time develop a keyboard based workflow which is going to be efficient. In the meantime, there are some uses of the mouse/trackpad which will help you easily achieve some tasks. That is the rationale behind this exercise.

I must add that I personally use a combination of Alfred, KeyboardMaestro, and Hazel to perform most of the tasks handled by each of these utilities. I will cover those in a later article.

Conclusion

Yoink is too basic. DropZone 3 and FilePane are both better alternatives. FilePane is a deeper product than DropZone 3 out of the box. But DropZone 3 is extendible through its API. If you are a programmer, you might be more suited to DropZone 3. For the non-programmers, FilePane is a better alternative.

I recommend both FilePane and DropZone 3 without any reservations. Yoink though efficient is too basic.

I bought DropZone 3 and Yoink. FilePane was provided by the developer for a review.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

Yoink FilePane Dropzone 3 macOS